Raven's Mountain by Orr Wendy Page B

would understand if someone else’s kid went into their house and used their phone to save her sister and stepfather’s lives.
    My heart’s hammering and my mouth is even drier than when I woke. I’ve never done anything this bad on purpose.
    I pick up a rock and whack the kitchen window as hard as I can.
    The glass explodes.

19

SOMETIME SUNDAY MORNING
    The hole is a jagged star, with knife points of glass. I   smash those tall peaks off with another rock.
    Tiny splinters of glass jump into my fingers. I’m sucking off blood, spitting out glass. My lips are bleeding too, but I don’t know how else to get all that glass and blood out of my hands. I think I’ve swallowed a piece.
    And there are still slicing-sharp ridges of glass all along the bottom of the window.
    It would be really stupid to bleed to death before I   got to the phone   – and that’s what’s going to happen if I drag myself over that glass.
    Half an hour ago I probably would have started crying again. But it seems like whacking that rock through the window pushed the restart button on my frozen brain.
    I drag a cedar picnic chair over to the window. I   turn it so its back is against the wall. Then I go back to the front door and grab the doormat. It’s heavier than it looks   – one of those brown bristly mats with WELCOME in black letters. I hope the welcome still works through a window instead of the door.
    I heave it across the windowsill. It sticks out a lot; it’s not very bendy.
    Then I climb onto the chair. I lean onto the wobbly doormat but I can’t pull myself up and I’m still not quite high enough to wiggle through.
    Fear-butterflies flap in my stomach. I lean further onto the mat and step onto the back of the chair.
    The chair wobbles and tips. There’s a crash as I kick free, and now I’m lying across the windowsill doormat, scrambling forward and tumbling headfirst into the kitchen sink. The mat skids off to the floor, but my right knee smacks the edge of the draining board and I’m stuck in the sink in a jumble of hands, legs and arms. All the bare bits are bleeding. Seems like quite a lot of glass landed in the sink ahead of me.
    Then my arms and legs figure out how to untangle themselves, and I swing my legs over the bench and slide onto the floor.
    There should be flashing lights and prizes. There should be clapping and cheering. I’ve won.
    The prize is a phone. That’s what the ad said: ‘One Free Call with Every Broken Window.’
    I crunch across the broken glass on the kitchen floor.
    The phone’s not in the kitchen.
    It’s not in the living room.
    Now I really feel like a burglar . . . but it’s not in the bedrooms either.
    There’s no phone in this house.
    â€˜Stupid, stupid people!’ I scream at the empty kitchen. ‘How could you not have a phone!’
    I swing open a cupboard door, and there it is, right up on the top shelf with the cord wrapped around it. It’s pathetic and useless, and even worse than no phone at all, except it means I don’t have to go on looking.
    There are glasses and mugs on the shelf below the phone, but the next shelf has a jar of instant coffee, a jar of tea bags, a plastic container of powdered milk and a biscuit tin. There’s a full packet of chocolate-chip biscuits in the tin.
    Maybe these people aren’t so bad after all.
    Chocolate-chip biscuits are a whole lot better to eat than raw oats. Drinking from a mug is a whole lot easier than a tap. In about two minutes I’ve eaten six biscuits and I don’t even feel like I’m going to be sick.
    Biscuits in my tummy,
    Chocolate in my brain,
    It’s really very funny
    When you think you’re going insane.
    That one’s for Jess.
    But by the time I’ve eaten the next biscuit I’ve got a plan   – and that’s for me.
    I close the door carefully behind me when I leave the house. I